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EMAIL: contact@bluedoorpainters.com
LOCAL: 703-504-2000
FAX: 703-550-3755
EMAIL: contact@bluedoorpainters.com
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How Can I Protect My Deck From Snow?
Protect your deck and beware of rime ice!
Tips for winter deck care from Washington, DC / Northern Virginia area painting and deck staining contractor.
Early in the morning, you peak out the window to behold a winter wonderland. Your front lawn is a pristine sea of sparkling white. Your sidewalk is a pristine sea of sparkling white. Your back deck is a pristine sea of sparkling white….
Wait a minute: Is that okay?
Without protection, decks take a beating from the elements. Heat and cold, sun and rain, will all weather your deck at an accelerated rate. All four seasons bring unique challenges to exposed wood: summer brings heat and sun, spring brings excessive rain and drastic temperature changes, and fall brings the tannins of all the fallen leaves. Winter brings frosty cold – and with it, the great array of cold-weather precipitation: snow, ice, and sleet.
Of these, ice rime is the only one that you really need to worry about. Snow and sleet will add moisture to the deck, and cold temperatures will take their toll, but nothing acute will go wrong during a snowstorm, no matter how many inches of snow you get. Decks are very strong, and can survive even a serious blizzard. Ice rime is a different creature, however. Without proper finish to the wood, a solid layer of ice can work its way into cracks and pores in the wood, and the expansion and contraction that comes with freezing and thawing can lead to splintering. A good deck sealing job in the fall can go a long way to protect against this situation. If sealing or resealing your deck is a job that you put off for the spring, however, and you look out your window and want to clear a layer of ice from your deck, (or if you would like to be able to safely traverse it), you should follow these tips:
1. Do not chop ice with a shovel; the blade of the shovel can damage the wood
2. Melt the ice with rock salt, calcium chloride, or an environmentally friendly alternative
3. Shovel any snow, slush, or other wintry debris with a plastic shovel, using strokes that move along the boards, not cutting across them (the edge of the shovel may catch on the edges of the boards and damage them)
Generally speaking, unless you get a large tree trunk coming down, a single winter weather event will not be sufficient to damage your deck, so if you want to leave it as a pristine winter wonderland, go ahead. It is the cumulative effect of all four seasons that wears out a deck that hasn’t been properly stained and sealed. If this is something you find yourself worrying about this winter, why not consider staining it when the weather gets better in the spring? It might do wonders for your deck’s beauty and durability – and, next winter, for your peace of mind.
Why Can’t You Paint in the Winter?
Winter Painting Questions Answered by Washington, DC Area Contractor
Who really wonders how paint dries? It seems like there couldn’t be a simpler – or more boring – process to understand. The paint is wet, you give it some time, and then it dries. End of story, right?
Wrong.
Painters and painting engineers who understand what it takes for paint to dry, deeply respect the process for its delicacy and intricacy. Believe it or not, an understanding of how paint dries, and the interruptions that render it vulnerable, goes a long way toward understanding why you can’t paint in the winter.
First of all, paint does a lot more than just dry. It forms a film, changing from a viscous liquid to a strong, extremely thin, solid. While you may not think much of it, a paint film is actually a miraculous creation, standing straight up and adhering to the surface as a perfect uninterrupted whole. The transition from the liquid in the can to the strong, durable film that we rely on for our architectural protection, is a carefully choreographed process.
Each type of paint – oil, alkyd, latex, epoxy, etc – forms a film in a different way. For the purpose of this discussion, we will focus on latex paints, because they are becoming the most commonly used in the painting market.
Latex paint, though you can’t tell with the naked eye, is a curious mixture of tiny beads of plastic suspended in water. The beads don’t mix with the water, because they are not water soluble – and they do not stick together when the paint is in its liquid form, because they are separated by a third component mixed into the paint: the surfactant. The surfactant is a soapy oil that thinly coats each bead of plastic, making it bounce harmlessly off of any other beads of plastic that it may encounter while in suspension.
The “drying” – or, more accurately, “film forming” of latex paint is a play with three acts. Act one: the water evaporates out of the film, leaving behind the surfactant-coated beads of plastic. Act two: the surfactant, without the water to provide resistance, bleed together and run or evaporate out of the film. Act three: the beads of plastic, now exposed to each other, bind together in a powerful chemical process known as coalescence. This process is not reversible: once the beads of latex have bonded, they become inseparable, and a strong film is formed.
Here is what happens when you try to apply latex paint to a surface when it is cold, or wet (like undertaking an exterior paint job in the Washington, DC winter). Act one gets skipped, because when it is too cold or to moist, the air is saturated and does not encourage evaporation. So the water stays in the paint film. The surfactants, since they are heavy and are now applied in a vertical film with constant gravity, start to bleed together and leach out of the paint job anyway. Since the surfactants are leaching, the beads of plastic come in contact and start to bond – but since the water is still present, they bond in uneven clumps, and do not adhere to the substrate. Ultimately, the film forms with wide unstable patches, and with inadequate adhesion, fails completely.
Due to our understanding of the physics of paint film formation, Blue Door Painters exterior painting season is from late March through early December: the times of year when you can at least hope the temperature in Washington DC will stay above 35 degrees and the humidity will stay low enough to encourage a successful paint job.
Tips for Exterior Holiday Decorations
Tips on Hanging Exterior Christmas/Holiday Lights from Washington, DC Contractor
Let’s face it; December is a difficult time of year. The days are extremely short, the weather has finally quit the glorious crisp coolness of fall and has settled into the ugly, cold, soggy slog of winter. You have to cram yourself back into old coats, hats, slippers, and gloves, and the worst part of it is, you know you won’t get a break from all the extra gear for months. Darkness and coldness stretches before you.
Even if you find the holidays stressful, you have to admit that driving up your street in the evening and seeing all of the beautiful creations your neighbors have made out of holiday lights sparkling on your street brings a little bit of cheer into the bleakness. Especially when it starts to get dark around 4:30 in the afternoon, as it does in December in the Washington, DC/Northern Virginia area, the extra light and beauty makes a big difference.
If you want to add to the holiday cheer with your own seasonal decorations, but don’t know where to start, take heart. We have provided a few tips from our reservoir of expertise. Blue Door Painters offers a full service holiday decoration procedure, so we can take the more complicated aspects of your projects off your hands for an affordable price – but in the mean time, consider these five tips and you are sure to have a front yard that will wow and warm the hearts of your neighbors.
One: Review your home and landscaping for its decorative potential. Every style of architecture and landscape lends itself to a unique form of decoration, and you should bring out the strengths in your exterior with your holiday decorating in the same way that you would bring out the strengths with a new paint job. That means that you should check all the surfaces of the face of your home, and determine what would look beautiful when covered with lights. Any structural lines are natural candidates for adornment: eaves, windows, porches, handrails, and gables all provide interesting planes for the eye to follow when decorated with twinkling lights. Height is an important consideration, as any holiday decorating will look more sophisticated if reaches high. Consider height both in your architecture and in your landscaping; are there any high trees that can be decorated? Are there any interesting lines in the landscaping that can be emphasized, like walkways, repeating shrubbery, small conifers, or exterior lights? If there are large expanses of lawn, you might want to consider creating a winter or nativity scene.
Two: Pick a color palette. Holiday lights look beautiful in all colors, but if you want to have the most sophisticated composition, you should pick a color combination and keep it constant. You could use all multicolor lights, all white, or pick a few solid colors or patterns and alternate where you string them so that you highlight important aspects of your architecture and landscaping. Remember that with light, “cool” colors like blue, green, and violet tend to come to the foreground, while “warm” colors, like red, orange, and yellow tend to fade to the background. You want to bring out the clean lines of your architecture and landscaping the most prominently, and then create intricate detail in the spaces in between.
Three: Plan the project out and gather the necessary equipment. Hanging holiday lights is not complicated, but it can be frustrating and tedious if you are unprepared. Here is what you will need:
- A good ladder, that reaches to the appropriate height
- A large bucket with a handle, to carry the strings of lights up high
- A tool belt equipped with hammer, long, thin nails, a coil of florist’s wire, wire cutters, duct tape, and insulated gloves.
You will also want to make sure that you have all of the lights you need before you start the project, and that you have a clear plan for your composition. That will eliminate the frustration of getting halfway through the project and then having to go back out to the store.
Four: Hang the lights. Figure out where you will be plugging the string of lights in, and make sure that your outlet has the capability to run power through your entire string. Start at that side, with the lights not yet plugged in, and move methodically through your composition. Put up nails on smooth surfaces where you can’t find anywhere to hook them, and use the florists wire to secure them. Do not reach too far to either side of the ladder, because it isn’t safe; go down to the bottom and move the ladder over to get those hard-to-reach areas.
After you are done decorating the face of your house, move out into the lawn, keeping track of how all the lights will ultimately connect to the power source. Once you are all finished, you get to do the fun part: pull the ladder away, clean up any debris, and plug your lights in! Voila! Holiday cheer for the whole neighborhood.
